Dear Film Connoisseur Mr. Grant: Try "Grand Hotel," "Dinner at Eight," "China Seas" and "Viva Villa!" The first three are ensemble movies. "Viva Villa!" is a starring role.

Howdy Mick LaSalle: With all the Hollywood remakes and sequels each year, it doesn't appear there will ever be an end. However, there must have been a beginning. Is there a record of the first movie remake and the first sequel?

Ken Kirste, Sunnyvale

Howdy Ken Kirste: Apparently "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), usually credited as the first narrative fiction film, was remade in 1904, so that's probably the first remake. The first sequel is harder to figure, because a lot of the old silents were serialized, so whatever was the second movie in the first serial might be called the first sequel. Or maybe it's something earlier. For example, if you're Mary Pickford or Charlie Chaplin, and you're playing the same character in every movie, can your second movie, as that character, be defined as a sequel? Maybe. Or maybe it goes back even further. After all, you can have a sequel to a nonfiction film. So let's say you're the Lumiere brothers, in France in the 1890s, and you film yourself with your family. If you film your family again, maybe that qualifies as a sequel, too.

Dear Mick: You called the MPAA "gutless." That's apt but incomplete. Don't you think it's really more a case of both gutless and hypocritical?

Dear Ole: Yes, and useless, too, but I have mixed feelings about this, because for the most part, I want them to be useless. Their uselessness has allowed movies to go uncensored for the past 46 years. We don't need censors protecting adults from what adults want to see, but a rating system protecting kids from what they shouldn't see would be helpful, especially as the media continue to engulf us. Otherwise you're having a whole generation getting raised by a culture whose only interest is to profit by catering to the basest urges. As it stands, the MPAA gives R ratings to harmless and even humane movies like "At Middleton" and "Before Midnight" and gives PG-13 to any violent summer movie with money behind it.

Dear Mick LaSalle: In period movies, every character has perfect, straight, white teeth. Their costumes may be tattered and dirty, but their teeth are perfect. I guess we must assume that in those days there were implants, crowns, teeth whitening?

Shirley Krohn, Walnut Creek

Dear Shirley Krohn: No, it's just that different things mean different things at different times, and the movie is just making a translation. It's possible that a beautiful woman in her late 30s might have had messed-up teeth 800 years ago, and we know that George Washington had some serious dental problems in the 18th century. But yellow and false teeth - or weird false teeth, like Washington's - mean something different now.

The important thing is that heroes and heroines look like heroes and heroines. After all, if you're watching a movie about ancient Rome, they're not speaking Latin, either. Translations of all kinds are necessary. The other thing is that nobody wants to look at horrible teeth in a 50-foot close-up. The sight doesn't bring you back to that time. It shows you a horror that nobody then ever had the misfortune to see - and takes you out of the movie.

Dear Mick: So, do you think "Nymphomaniac" would be a good date movie?

Dear Tom: It depends on how you define a "good date." If you define it as one that ends in sexual intimacy, probably not. If you define it as one that culminates in two people throwing up and joining a monastery, absolutely. {sbox}

Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification.